News Flash for the Terminally Libertarded

Friday 13 August 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + Economy + Government + POTUS

Austerity. Fucking. Works. Los Tiempos de Nueva York:

Germany has sparred with its European partners over how to respond to the financial crisis, argued with the United States over the benefits of stimulus versus austerity, and defiantly pursued its own vision of how to keep its economy strong.

Statistics released Friday will buttress the German view that they had the formula [using austerity measures, AKA some serious fucking spending cuts] right all along. The government on Friday announced second quarter economic growth of 2.2 percent compared with the previous quarter, the German economy’s best performance since reunification 20 years ago, and an annual rate of close to 9 percent.

The strong growth figures will surely bolster the conviction here that German workers and companies in recent years made the short-term sacrifices necessary for long-term success that Germany’s European partners did not. And it will reinforce the widespread conviction among policy makers that they handled the financial crisis and the painful recession that followed it far better than the United States, which, they never hesitate to remind, brought the world into this crisis.

How did they manage to yet again show Keynesian economics to be a fucking joke?

By paring unemployment benefits, easing rules for hiring and firing, and management and labor’s working together to keep a lid on wages, Germany ensured that it could again export its way to growth with competitive, nimble companies producing the cars and machine tools the world’s economies — emerging and developed alike — demanded.

Germans steered clear of the debt-fueled consumption boom that many believe contributed to the financial crisis. During the recession, Chancellor Angela Merkel resisted the palliative of government spending that the United States and some European partners felt was crucial to restoring growth.

Let’s translate this into terms Americans can more fully understand. They cut down public employee benefits and retirement compensation, cut down on government regulation and taxes on business employment practices, and put unions in their place. The German government also resisted spending like a drunken fool at a strip club with one too many lines of credit (I.e., stimulus spending).

They’ve also raised the age of retirement and cut down drastically on welfare payments.

In other words, they did exactly the opposite of Obamanomics and achieved serious growth.

Not until government backs the fuck down on its “I’m the fucking savior” role it has been playing will our economy start to mend itself.

2010-08-13  »  madlibertarianguy